Ram Leela – Film Review

Ram Leela

Film Review

Woke up Friday morning and the first thing I did was buy my ticket to the 10:20 pm show of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram-Leela. It was the only thing I was looking forward to all week. Arrived to the cinema and it was a houseful and fans of Bhansali, Deepika and Ranveer were getting disappointing to having to see the film the second day. I felt like I was reliving the time when I saw Devdas back in 2002 where the lines of the film were leading out the door and people were anxiously waiting to see a classic love saga on-screen.

The film began at it’s beginning credits and I felt the vibes of Devdas and Saawariya and the music was similar to Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. The film was set in Rajasthan and parts of the film reminded me exactly pulled from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Then the film reminded me of the book, Romeo and Juliet the classic Shakespeare Play and some of the dialogues were exactly from the play itself…

So what was different? The actors mainly. Ranveer Singh playing the role of Ram, shameless, naughty but loving. Deepika Padukone playing the role of Leela, beautiful, gorgeous and romantic. I had to sleep on this film before I could immediately review it because on a whole the film was just ‘good’ but it wasn’t amazing and outstanding. Sanjay Leela Bhansali has pulled so much from his past films where all I kept thinking was, ‘oh this song reminds me of this film’ or ‘this scene reminds me of that film’. There was truly nothing different and outstanding and it definitely is only a one-time watch only.

It was a disappointment and quite heartbreaking. Every time a new scene arose onto screen, I was hoping for a twist but the entire plot was predictable due to it’s exact story line based on Romeo and Juliet. I ended up having the stories of Yash Raj Films, 2012 Ishaqzaade in mind and Manish Tiwary’s 2013 Issaq in mind which also both these films are based off Romeo and Juliet. I feel this story line is simply over done and pointless to see in the cinema, yes if I were to compare the three, Bhansali projected this film accurately on-screen page by page of the play but other than that I wasn’t awed at any moment.

I love the sets, clothing and presentation of the film itself. But it was entirely too similar to all his past films and because of that I wish he would bring a different type of love-saga to the industry and instead meshed all his stories together and created, Romeo and Juliet AKA- Ram Leela.